Weekend Box Office: Audiences Are Not Bored With ‘Jumanji’

The Rock isn’t playing around: For the second straight weekend, his sequel to Jumanji ruled the weekend box office chart. Dipping just 24 percent, it grossed an additional $28.1 million, bringing its domestic total to $284.2 million. Here’s the rest of the box office chart:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

Total

1

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

$28,125,000 (-24%)

$7,307

$284,260,909

2

The Post

$19,300,000 (+1,036%)

$6,846

$23,789,237

3

The Commuter

$13,700,000

$4,737

$13,700,000

4

The Greatest Showman

$12,500,000 (-9%)

$4,255

$95,253,868

5

Insidious: The Last Key

$12,450,000 (-57%)

$3,952

$48,691,140

6

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

$12,073,000 (-49%)

$3,907

$592,347,584

7

Paddington 2

$10,900,000

$2,944

$10,900,000

8

Proud Mary

$9,925,000

$4,671

$9,925,000

9

Pitch Perfect 3

$5,985,000 (-41%)

$2,389

$94,983,225

10

Darkest Hour

$4,470,000 (-26%)

$2,640

$35,684,552

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, also starring Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan is a surprising smash. It’s already grossed $674 million worldwide, compared with the original’s $262 million worldwide in 1995. Against a reported budget of $90 million, the film is already the eighth-highest grossing film of 2017; with one more good weekend, it will pass Thor: Ragnarok for seventh place. It’s a huge hit. Expect Jumanj3 to be announced any day now.

In second place for the weekend was The Post, the new newspaper thriller from director Steven Spielberg. Expanding into wide release, the film posted (sorry) a solid per-screen average and grossed some $19.3 million in the U.S. CinemaScore audiences also gave the film a very strong “A” rating, which bodes well for its future in theaters. Maybe we’ll get a sequel to this one too! What’s the Washington Post up to these days, anyone know?

CinemaScore voters were less enamored with the weekend’s third place film, The Commuter, giving it a “B.” That suggests viewers weren’t as pleased with the latest Liam Neeson thriller. The film grossed an estimated $13.7 million over the holiday weekend, which is basically on par with Neeson’s last couple action vehicles. It narrowly edged out The Greatest Showman, which in fourth place for the second straight week. It dipped less than 10 percent from the previous weekend to earn $12.5 million. (Adding special sing-along screenings may have coaxed some fans back into the theater.) Fifth place for the weekend was the latest Insidious, which dropped a whopping 58 percent. But the film has already grossed nearly $50 million against a $10 million budget. So that series may well continue anyway as well.

The weekend’s other wide releases were the well-reviewed Paddington 2 and the blaxploitation homage Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson; they came in seventh and eighth place respectively. The best per-screen average of the weekend was Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, which added about 50 screens and grossed $1.1 million for a PSA of $18,468. It only needs to make about $5.5 million more to surpass PTA’s last film, Inherent Vice. (And then about $280 million more to catch up to Jumanji. Good luck Daniel Day-Lewis!)